SHOULD BE OPENED UP.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 14043, 29 October 1909, Page 6

SHOULD BE OPENED UP.

IDLE LAND IN THE NORTH

Some interesting information as to what the opening up of tho idle lands of the Dominion would really mean to its people is given in a special article in the Auckland "Herald." After pointing out that there are no fewer than ten million acres lying idl<; in the North Island, of which seven millions are in the Auckland province, the writer continues: —Let us see what could be done if a million acres, or onetenth of this area, were settled by men ofiour own race. Under the optional system in moderate-sized farms we could easily pick a million acres which, when grassed, would carry a million and a half of sheep. Sheep farming probably gives the very lowest returns of any class of agriculture, yet, estimating the yield of the average obtained from moderate-sized flocks, this would mean a revenue of over a million pounds sterling per year. Turn this million acres into dairy farms, properly grassed and properly stocked with good cows. A million acres could be selected which could easily carry a dairy cow to three acres, but even allowing for a capacity of 300,000 cows only, they should yield over £3,000,000 in a ten-month season. Allowing one hundred acres for each farm, this would mean a thousand new farms which would carry at a moderate estimation ten thousand people under shep farming. Under diarying the land would more thickly populated. Two hundred acres for each farm would mean 5000 dairy farms, and as each farm would carry at least seven people, it would mean a total population on the million acres of 35,000 people. The settlement of land means something more than the farm population it would carry. If ten thousand people were engaged in this newly-set-tled million acres it would mean at least another ten thousand people in our cities and towns, or a total increase of twenty thousand, people, while, under the closer settlement required by dairying, the total increase to the population of the country would be seventy thousand people. The Go-

vernment Statistician estimates the trade per head of New Zealand's population excluding specie, as between £35 and £39 per annum. On this hasis the settlement of a million acres of our idle land on a close system, say, as dairy farms, would, with the resultant increase of seventy thousand people, lift our annual trade l>v no Jess than £2.590,000 yearly—surely, a gain worth working for. One would Ihink that such important advantages would ho sufficient to encourage every politician in the country to exert himself to the utmost to place sell locs noon our wasto lands.